The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) announced that the Home Health Value-Based Purchasing (HHVBP) Model has been certified for expansion beginning in Calendar Year 2022. The CMS Innovation Center implemented the HHVBP Model on January 1, 2016 to test whether providing payment incentives for better quality care with greater efficiency would improve the quality and delivery of home health care services to Medicare beneficiaries. The HHVBP Model adjusts payments to Medicare-certified home health agencies (HHAs) on the quality of care provided rather than the volume of services rendered. The payment adjustments are determined based on a home health agency’s quality performance measures relative to peers in its state. Currently, all Medicare-certified HHAs that provide services in Arizona, Florida, Iowa, Maryland, Massachusetts, Nebraska, North Carolina, Tennessee, and Washington participate in the model. The model has resulted in an average 4.6% improvement in home health agencies’ quality scores as well as average annual savings of $141 million to Medicare.
More information on the HHVBP Model is available here.
